[TAP] Summary: data type for column metadata

[Mark Taylor]

On Thu, 16 Apr 2009, Patrick Dowler wrote:

> This does mean that TAP should specify how the column names in TAP_SCHEMA (and 
> the query) relate to the FIELDs in the VOTable? Specifically, which attribute 
> of FIELD holds the (fully-qualified) column name? Otherwise, people could not 
> put the two together and understand the VOTable fully.

Yes, be explicit, but this has to be the "name" attribute, surely.
The only other possibility is "ID", which (a) looks to me like
inappropriate use of XML id/ref mechanisms and (b) imposes some 
syntactic restrictions on content (column name) which might possibly 
be problematic.

> Side note: Mark Taylor proposed a format attribute for FIELD where one could 
> specify the encoding (ISO8601, hex, STC-S, etc). That would be a nice 
> addition...

I still think so, but my attempts to argue for it haven't met with 
much success to date.  If DAL or DAL/TAP agreed this was a Good Thing 
and made a request to the VOTable WG it might move it forward.  Might.

-- 
Mark Taylor   Astronomical Programmer   Physics, Bristol University, UK
m.b.taylor at bris.ac.uk +44-117-928-8776 http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/~mbt/